Forget Me Not
by star wars for Jesus
Summary: Shortly before the events of Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi is allowed a short leave from the fields of battle. But rather than remain at the Temple during his R&R, Obi-Wan has decided to spend it on Stewjon, his homeworld. There, he stays with his family, attempting to reconnect with them while coming to terms with the death of his one-time lover, Satine Kryze.
1. Chapter 1

_**(FROM THE PERSONAL DIARIES OF OBI-WAN KENOBI)**_

_**Stewjon, two years after the battle of Geonosis:**_

_Truth be told, I like the water. I do. It's just that…well, I haven't quite pin-pointed the cause of this, haven't yet determined why I have this little H2O fancy of mine. Just know that it's there—here—and that today, practically all I did was stare into the currents of a river, watching as it cut through the landscape like a tear across a cheek._

_ Oh, and you want to where this river is? No, I'm afraid I can' give you precise geographic coordinates—not because I'm trying to be clandestine or anything, but because I'm entirely uncertain of what they are. Or of where I am, in terms of precise latitude and longitude. All I can tell you for sure is that I'm home, on my birth-planet. On my parent's farm, to be more exact, listening to my mother and father and brother prattle on in the kitchen._

_ I know what you're probably thinking: do you know them? Do you truly, deeply _know_, know _them_? Or are you a stranger, distant, unfamiliar, removed? And frankly, I'm not entirely sure _what _I am. Because I don't quite know them. But they aren't entirely unfamiliar to me—not yet._

_ But to them, I might as well be a stranger._

_ Not that I don't try and converse with them or anything. We actually enjoy one another's company, will be laughing and smiling wide, wide whenever we're together. But when I'm alone with one of them—with either my father, my mother, or my brother, Owen—I feel as though they're studying me intently, like they aren't sure who I am. What I am, even though they themselves handed me off to the Order. Even though they've seen the wartime holo-broadcasts, have watched my face flash across a screen as an anchor gravely details the exploits of "General Kenobi."_

_ My brother had asked me about this, how I felt about being hailed as some illustrious war hero. And you know what I told him? Lonely—that's how I feel. Because when you reach this level, when you've been elevated in society's expectant (and easily disappointed) mind, you've been isolated from everything…and everyone. You walk a lonely path, one filled with heart-ache, pain, loss—the latter of which will haunt your waking steps till you've left this world for the next._

_ That's partially why I'm here: for loss. To cope with it. To prepare myself for it, too, building up the necessary defenses about the ragged tatters of my heart._

_ And perhaps to prepare them for it, too._

_ But none of family has asked about this. About why I'm here. They've simply excepted it, looked its reality in the eye and surrendered to it without qualms. Questions. Natural curiosity._

_ It's funny, but the other day, I met someone who actually asked questions. About me. And strangely enough, having someone break my silence came as a relief. It was…soothing. As smooth and cool as the river._

_ That's where I met her—at the river. I'd joined my brother in the fields that day, helping him goad a throng of eopies from one pasture to the other (I've always been good with animals, you see), and after five or so hours of work under Stewjon's merciless summer sun, we'd decided to head to the river. We'd waded into it, the two of us, allowing its icy flows to banish all memory of our toil. And we'd talked, too, chatted about this and that and everything else until he decided to leave. Wanted to wash up before dinner, I guess—but the only washing I'd wanted was from the river, so I'd stayed behind._

_ Stripped to the waist, I'd waded once more into its current. Eddies and flows had rush past me, massaging my rigid back with steady fingers; liquid ice had kissed my skin, carrying away all the struggles and toils of the day. Then I'd straightened, suddenly aware of a presence nearby, and I'd whirled around. Spotted a woman standing on the edge of the bank, a small urn clutched to her chest._

_ "Can I help you?" I'd asked, both vexed somewhat self-conscious at her presence._

_ Instead of answering, her gaze went straight to my bare shoulder. "How did you get that scar?"_

_ Bemused, I'd followed her eyes to spot of inquiry. Yes, I had a scar their—still have it now, in fact, can feel it just beneath my tunic. But until that moment, I'd scarcely given thought to it. That should surprise you, given how awful the scar is: pinched and dark, its snakes down my right shoulder onto my pectoral muscle, marring it indelibly. For all their expertise, not even the Jedi Healers could wipe away this scar—and neither will smothering it with clothes, apparently._

_ Lightsaber wounds are the only injuries that can scar Jedi._

_ Shrugging, I put a hand over the spot, as if that would wipe the sight of it from her memory. "This? I recall picking a fight with a man I could never beat, then almost dying at the hands of said man. Luckily, I had a friend with me then, so it didn't come to that—and really, I ended up faring better than my comrade did." Noting her nonplussed expression, I'd elaborated: "He lost his arm."_

_ "What kind of weapon did…" With a free arm, she gestured to both my shoulder and something unseen. "…that?"_

_ "The nasty variety," I'd replied, then opted to leave it at that. I nodded at her urn. "May I ask what that's for?"_

_ She glanced down at it solemnly, as if the thing she'd held was unbelievably sacred. "I'm remembering."_

_ "Remembering what?"_

_ "Something," she'd answered distractedly, then she'd turned on her heel, heading back toward wherever it was she'd came from._

_ When I'd arrived home, bone-dry and fully-clothed, I asked my brother if he knew if any local women made it a habit to stop by the river. He'd listened in silence as I'd described her—around my age, brown eyes and hair, with a plain face and a plainer voice—regarding me with interest. According to him, she was their late neighbor's widow, and given that her husband had passed in the last couple of weeks or so, I was possible that that urn had contained his ashes. When asked if she'd scattered them there, I only shrugged, told him she'd just upped and left._

_ "Is she…crazy?" I'd asked, voice low._

_ He'd shaken his head. "No, but I think she's sick. Like, she's dying from some karking stubborn disease."_

_ My eyebrows lifted. "She's dying?"_

_ "Yeah. But I'm not sure what it is she's got. Whatever it is, though, she'll probably be in an urn herself sometime soon."_

_ After that, I haven't asked him anything more about the woman at the river. But you know what? I think I'll make a point to visit this woman tomorrow, after the sun crests the golden fields. Ask her a few questions._

_ And maybe she'll ask a few of her own._

_ For now, however, I'm left to mull over this little encounter. Puzzle over it. It's a tad familiar, after all, having someone ask about my scar: roughly a year ago, I underwent a similar encounter, just with a different face. It was still a woman, still someone I vaguely knew but desperately wanted to know, to peel away the film and see what actually lied beneath. True, I had known her in my younger days, had been friends and beyond for some time—but for whatever reason, she had grown as alien as the homely woman of the river._

_ Satine Kryze had asked about my scar._

_ No wonder I haven't dwelled on my scar in long, long while, then._

_ Yet—no. I'm not going back there. Not tonight. I came here to escape that, to leave it all behind in the stinging wake we call the past._

_ Perhaps the woman will ask me about this, too._


	2. Chapter 2

_**(THE NEXT DAY)**_

_ On a farm, the first, unshakeable reality is this: things break. Often. Machinery, marriages, livestock—you name it, and it will wilt under the ever-looming gaze of entropy._

_ Strangely, it's the livestock who are succumbing most often to this inevitable law of existence. They're just…dying. Not in massive throngs, mind you—if that were the case, members of the Republic's disease and outbreak control would already be swarming us, sifting through the bodies with fine-toothed combs. But enough of them are dropping dead to warrant my family's concern, so I suppose that makes it my trouble, too._

_ When I'd set off this morning to find the woman of the river, I'd witnessed first-hand what sort of carnage this unknown outbreak (if that's what's even causing this) has sown. Bodies, bloated and distended, had sprawled across the banks of the river, barring the way to its currents with their rigid extremities. They hadn't been dead too long—maybe twenty four hours, since that was when I had last visited the river—but already the stench of death was beginning to rise in the air in sharp, pungent waves. This had probably attracted the scavengers I saw clustered about the carcasses, their tapered heads attacking their garish meal with gusto, their gaunt, near-cadaverous forms coated in blood and urine and just about every bodily fluid imaginable._

_ Strangely enough, one day they'll find themselves in the exact same predicament: their carcasses will feed the living, who will soon join them in their fate._

_ By the time I had reached the widow's cottage (Owen had provided me with more than a few directions), I was shivering. Because I remembered the urn, tightly clutched in the woman's lean, shaky arms, and that that's where she's soon headed, too. It's where we're all destined, really—we are born, shoved from our mother's wombs into a hungry, shrieking world that will push us toward…something. To whatever lies beyond this world, to what hovers on its border with expectant eyes._

_ Slumped in a chair just outside her ashen dwelling, the widow gazed at me with a similar note swimming in her dark eyes. "You're that man from the river."_

_ I nodded in response to her non-question. "I am. But I'm afraid neither of us had the chance to properly introduce ourselves, and since my brother tells me that you're a neighbor of his, I was hoping we'd at least get to know one another."_

_ The woman straightened slightly in her chair, considering me with renewed interest. "You're a Kenobi, aren't you?"_

_ Another nod. "I am."_

_ "I thought as much. You're the spitting image of your father." She bit her lip. "So Owen's your brother, right?"_

_ "He is."_

_ She tilted her head to one side, reminding me of a curious vine-cat who'd happened to glimpse its reflection. "How come I haven't seen you around till this week? Do you live off-world or something?"_

_ "I do, actually. In fact, I haven't really frequented Stewjon much since I was a boy. The last time I visited…" I glanced up at the yellow, watery sky, as if its delicate canvas might offer the answer I sought. "It was before the war, if I recall correctly."_

_ "What are you doing here now, then?"_

_ I paused. This is what I'd been waiting, waiting, waiting for my family to ask, to inquire. Hearing them say it, watching their lips form and shape the words—that would've been enough to convince me that we shared a bond apart from blood. Apart from the dutiful obligations of genetics. But instead of them asking, it was the widow who dared break the silence, who took the leap and got right to heart of the matter._

_ My gaze locked with hers, letting the truth of my words seep between us. "I lost someone I loved." I hesitated, then added, "Owen tells me that you've lost someone as well."_

_ Her expression flashed with surprise. "I don't know what you're talking about."_

_ "He says you had a husband," I pressed, "and that he recently passed away."_

_ As if her interest had once more been piqued, the woman regarded me curiously. "You're a Kenobi, aren't you?"_

_ "I already s—" Cutting myself off, I sighed, and pinched sharply at the bridge of my nose. "Yes, I'm a Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi."_

_ "Owen's your brother, isn't he?"_

_ "He's my brother," I confirmed again, trying hard not to let frustration crest. "Do you know him?"_

_ "Know him?" she echoed, voice shrill with incredulity. "Is he that man from the river? The man with the scar?"_

_ And with that, the woman's gaze clouded, caught up in some far, distant land that only she could see. She never said anything afterward, not a word; we were left in silence. Cold, cloying noiselessness._

_ Suspecting that she might be suffering from some type of dementia, I decided to take my leave of her then, heading back toward my family's quaint farmhouse. But halfway between there and the widow's wan dwelling, I stopped abruptly. Just stood there, frowning down at golden cords of wheat and a fast-encroaching noon, and mulled things over. The man with the scar…does that mean that she remembered me, remembered asking about it? Because I do—and remember when Satine did, as well._

_ Night had swarmed over Concordia, throwing all into cool, bluish light. Satine and I had just come out of a a skirmish with a few members of an insurgency known as "Death Watch, and despite being ferociously glad that we hadn't met an early demise, we were a little worse for wear. Well, alright—_I_, not _we_. Satine—she was fine, was only shaky from the waves of adrenaline that greet you at danger's threshold. There weren't bruises marking her body, weren't any spots where blaster bolts had skimmed her skin, heat kissing away enough flesh to make it burn._

_ But there were some marks on mine._

_ As soon as Satine and I had made it back to our ship, I'd slipped into one of the vessel's back compartments, and sagged against the wall. Slid down to the floor, my body protesting loudly against any and all movement. I was banged up pretty badly, this time—badly enough that adrenaline had overtaken me in droves, fending off the worst of the pain till now. Till now, when my body was certain that the tides had finally settled._

_ Wincing, I'd stripped off my tunic—and was confronted with a rather worrying sight. Bruises were spreading under my skin, sickly purple and aching with every breath. Scorch-marks ran along my sides, their charred tracks seared into my skin like brands, and felt a few of them open as I twisted to get a better view of my bones. They wept puss and serum as I gazed down at that porcelain cage, but hey—at least it wasn't as bad as the hairline fracture I knew had graced my sternum._

_ And then I'd heard the door hiss open, and Satine had slipped in. At first she'd been shocked, seeing that patchwork of bruises and burns; then she'd just been embarrassed, because I'd stripped to the waist, leaving my chest and torso bare. But after a while the surprise and abashment had worn off, replaced by a knowing look as she her gaze found my shoulder._

_ She blinked. "That's new."_

_ "What's new?" I asked—but I already knew. It was the scar. _My_ scar. The only one I had, besides the one on my thigh—but even that was too much. They're windows instead of walls, serving passageways into the past when all you wish is that your memory would stop, would shrivel into a dark, snaking line like the scar itself._

_ "When did you get it?" she pressed, undeterred by my bemusement._

_ I laid a palm over it, caressing it like I had once caressed her silken face. "A few months ago, back on Geonosis. Anakin and I were after Dooku, actually, but things didn't go quite as we'd intended." I paused, mind's eyes returning to that sun-baked world. "Dooku only managed to graze me with his blade, but it was enough to incapacitate me. If it weren't for Anakin, I most likely wouldn't be sitting here."_

_ "The wound—it never healed?"_

_ "No," I'd replied, going still as she'd knelt by my side, intent on helping me back into my tunic. "Lightsabers wounds are, for whatever reason, the only thing that can leave scars on Jedi. The Healers aren't certain what causes this, either, but they have their theories."_

_ "Like what?"_

_ "Like the universe has a rather sadistic brand of humor, allowing Jedi to only be scarred by their principal weapons."_

_ "Well," she said, sweeping my sweat-streaked hair from forehead, "it _is_ a tad ironic that a weapon made of light delivers a Jedi's scars."_

_ To this day I can't disagree with her._


	3. Chapter 3

_This morning, I finally thought it. Then said it aloud. And perhaps believed it, if only for a moment._

_ Satine is dead._

_ Hardly anyone knows of this, though. There's me, of course—but the list of others, of a being outside myself who'll shoulder this burdensome knowledge, is scant. Honestly, I believe only the Jedi Council, Satine's sister, and Anakin have been told, and I doubt that they've let this catch the wind. Even loose-lipped Anakin looked too morose to spread around the news, too shaken into silence._

_ I think it's because there, hearing that, he caught of glimpse of his own destiny. I won't deny it: Anakin has attachments. Fierce, nagging ones. And although he refuses to see it looming on his horizon, he knows that all of these attachments—all of this furious, burning love—will unravel in the end._

_ Life in general mirrors that of life on the farm: things break. Fall apart. And despite your desperate, pleading attempts, they will not be reassembled. Put back together, because they can't. Once a thing is broken, it remains that way—except it's not broken. Not really._

_ It's dead._

_ Strange, how we pretend that reality works otherwise. We blind ourselves, shove our fingers into our ears so that whispers of the dead won't reach them, won't remind them of the inevitable. Won't show them the single, most consistent truth of the galaxy: we will die. All of us—so remember that, reader. _

_ They recall it here, on Stewjon. In a way. I mean, it's not as if they're morbid, death-obsessed, etc.—they just remember it. Because it's all around them, on these farms: things are dying. Especially on our—their—farm. _

_ My father doesn't say it aloud, but I think he feels as though this sudden livestock epidemic (if that's what it is) has something to do with my presence here. As if I've caused it. Which wouldn't be all that outrageous, considering my track record; Qui-Gon's—Adi's—Siri's—Satine's—and countless other's ashes could attest to this. I bring death, it seems, its scourge melding with my shadow. Following, stalking me when my face is turned toward the sun, stretching its hand toward whomever it pleases._

_ I've been told my entire life that everything that happens—everything—is the will of the force. All the dancing, the mourning, living, dying…that's all merely a chord in the grand symphony, a brushstroke in the masterpiece of time. But at times like this, I wonder: is this really true? Does it just as soon kill than bring to life? Or did someone get something wrong, and some malignant, outside party has gained dominance over the force in these areas, claiming its own dark sovereignty? _

_ The force's currents, serene and buoying me with light, offer no answers._

_ I tried to get some answer out of my father, though. I have questions. Probing thoughts that wonder why the widow next door appears to have dementia when she's too young, too alive for such a thing._

_ My father, back to pallid afternoon, frowned at that. His eyes were hard, impervious to the winds and rains that scour normal beings, but they weren't unkind. They'd simply grown accustom to hurt, that's all, had learned the hard way to raise the shield before something painful streaks through._

_ And now that I think about it, the widow was right: I _am_ the spitting image of my father. He is older, yes, is worn and weathered by both age and a lifetime of toiling under the bless-curse sun. But sweep aside the years and he is an echo of me—or rather, I am an echo of him. A being he took part in creating out of the whispering clouds, forging version of his clear blue gaze, russet hair (his has silvered beyond this, though) and strong, taut jaw. Even my mannerisms—the way I cock my brows often, how my lips form that inexplicable Kenobi half-smile-are shadows of him, moving in time with his chords._

_ Beneath his beard, my father—the substance of my shadow—pressed his lips into a thin, glass-blade line. "I'm not sure why, Obi-Wan. But her husband was acting like that too, before he passed. So I'm wondering if they took to the same sickness."_

_ "Owen mentioned that much," I said, moving to stand beside him. To show the galaxy that we truly were facsimiles of another. _

_ He raised a brow. "Did he tell you that used to know the widow pretty well, too?"_

_ "I'm afraid he failed to mention that."_

_ "Well, he did, Obi-Wan. Knew her better than a friend, too. In fact, they were in love, once. When they were younger."_

_ This took me completely off-guard. Shook me. Rattled me, my teeth flying free of my skull to bury themselves in rich, ebony ground. "I never knew he'd been interested in anyone. We've exchanged a few letters, but that's…that's not something he's ever brought up."I frown. "How old was he, anyway?"_

_ "It was about twelve years ago, so he's would've just cusped twenty-one."_

_ I'm four years than Owen, so that would've made me twenty-five. And twenty-five…that world was different, vastly so. Was brighter, because Qui-Gon's loud, loud flame had not yet been snuffed out, extinguished by the harsh, icy gust that was the Sith. _

_ Brighter and in the presence of Satine's distant, flickering light._

_ "Do you know anything else of their relationship?" I pressed, wanting the outlines to form around these familiar strangers. _

_ My father shook his head. "Aw, no. If you were interested in knowing the ins and outs, Obi-Wan, you'd have to ask him. Or better yet, ask your mum; she won't be as sensitive on the subject as he'll be."_

_ So I'd grunted my agreement, matched my father step-for-step as he plodded through the fields, destined for home. And ironically enough, we never looked at another. Never tossed a side-ward glance, never craned a neck to meet the other's eyes; we simply trod on, mirroring one each other in every way but failing to acknowledge the reflections themselves._

_ If I recall correctly, Satine hadn't resembled her father. Not in the slightest. They were alike in spirit, in their fierce, undaunted determination—but that was where all similarities halted, giving way to her mother's soft features and elegant shape._

_ And she had looked her father in the eye enough times to feel the chasm of his death._

_ So—that's a difference between her and I. But…well, she knew her mother, too, looked her in the eye. Met the face that was but of a shadow of, an echo that would—should-carry well beyond her parents._

_ But as far as family goes, I know my mother best. In spirit, we are one: self-contained, reserved. Bursting with inward zeal that wishes to boil to the surface, shearing its stifling cloud, but can't. Or won't, for fear that we will lose control._

_ That we will be swept away by the river, carried far off toward who-knows-where._

_ Once my father and I reached the house, I found my mother in my room—or the room I've been staying in this week, at least. She is a small woman, a frail girl who happens to lug around the body of a frailer adult. Her shoulders are perpetually slumped, bowing at the footstool of time, and despite being properly nourished, she is gaunt. And she looked all the more that way, when I found her, with the addition of her bleak gaze. Of her cold, gray eyes, starring unblinkingly at a colder, grayer wall._

_ Leaning against the door frame, I had to force down a lump that was forming in my tightening throat. The scene was all-too familiar, really. It was like glancing over my shoulder, gazing through the window of memory into some of the darkest days of existence, when hope had chilled and death had become nothing more than an impregnable barrier._

_ The scene reminded—still reminds me, even as I write this—of the days after Qui-Gon's death._

_ I was twenty-five then, newly appointed to the rank of Jedi Knight and mentor to one of the most promising—and possibly most dangerous—beings in the galaxy: Anakin Skywalker. But I wasn't with him, in the days following Qui-Gon's untimely end. He was at my side at the funeral, yes, watched with round eyes and trembling lips as my former teacher's shell-body dissolved into charred oblivion—but not in the days after. Those days were spent in my quarters, alone, starring into a cold, gray wall with colder, grayer eyes. No food. Barely any water. Just me, facing what death had ultimately shown itself to be._

_ Despite what the Master tell us about becoming one with the force after death, of melding into something far greater than our tiny blip-selves, they are wrong when they refer to passing on as going through a door. Are just _wrong_. For if it were a door, we'd be passing through it into something more real, into something we've been straining toward ours entire lives but could never quite reach. We would become solid, substantial—not melt into some spreading, cosmic pantheism. So really, death is a wall: a place where we cannot enter through, because we cease to be ourselves at the final toll of the bell._

_ I feel that somewhere, deep inside, that our bodies shouldn't be swept up into the animistic currents of the force._

_ But I can't say why._

_ Like I still can't pinpoint my love of the water, for its ceaseless, life-giving flow._

_ Shaking myself free from that somber reverie, I cleared my throat. Saw my mother straighten, just a bit. Watched her beleaguered gaze meet mine, trying and trying to glisten but failing, showing me only gray and ashes._

_ Perhaps I resemble my mother after all._

_ "Obi-Wan," she said, the words coming out as weary, down-trodden sigh. "Sorry I'm in your way, but it's just—" Her eyes fell on the wall, on the empty ceiling and too-neat cot. "I was only wondering…"_

_ "What it would've been like if I hadn't been a Jedi?" I supplied._

_ She nodded, bleakly. "Yes. I was wondering what it would've felt like—to see you grow up, raise a family of your own, and watch your children do the same." A pause, brimming with quiet, trembling hope. "Is there anyone that you…?"_

_ I shook my head, chest heavy with the weight of the urn stashed beneath my cot. "There was, once. But she's gone now—and besides, Jedi aren't allowed to have families. They…complicate things, mum."_

_ She blinked, as if she were clearing nonexistent dust from her pale eyes. "Is that why they hardly let you see us, obi?"_

_ My pressed against my rib cage, an awful, draining weight. That was once Satine's nickname for me. Was what she called me when she feeling playful, or nagging, and was simply felt that she had to call into the night and make certain I was still there. Still close. But now— "It is. But I did have a family, in a way. My mentor was as much a father to me as anyone, and I my own apprentice…he was like my son, mum. Like my brother, now that he's older." I showed her a gentled, pain-etched smile. "But I never had anyone who I could've called my mother. No one can take that place. And no one will, I can assure you."_

_ "Oh, obi." She took my hands between my own, pressed them there and held them to prominent, knife-like cheek. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you, _thank you_."_

_ But something in her eyes wasn't quite…there. "Something's bothering you, isn't it?"_

_ Reluctantly allowing my hands to go free, she sighed. "It's the animals, obi. Your father and Owen found twelve more dead by the river. Could be that it's tainted, that river—poisoned with something."_

_ My brows climbed my forehead, reminding me once more that I am my father's son. "And our water supply—it doesn't come from the river, does it?"_

_ "No. No, we get ours from a well, so we're safe. Might just be that we'll have to block off the river, keep our animals from drinking from it till we know for sure what's tainting it."_

_ I dragged a hand over my beard, bleached a honeyed copper by Stewjon's syrupy sun. "I happen to have some rudimentary analysis equipment on my person. It won't be entirely accurate, but Owen and I could go test the water tomorrow—and move the animals to another field, while we're at it. One that doesn't allow them access to the river."_

_ Her eyes brightened. "You could do that?"_

_ "I can, and I will. Say, tomorrow? After sunrise?"_

_ "After sunrise," she confirmed, eyes full of tentatively returning hope. "I'll go tell Owen. And Obi-Wan?"_

_ I straightened. "Yes?"_

_ "That woman you used to have—she didn't like beards, did she?"_

_ I blinked, stroking my beard self-consciously. No, actually. No, she _hadn't_ liked beards, had even told me so once. Caressing my chin with her soft hands, she'd suggested that she liked me clean-shaven; it showed my "handsome face", quote-on-quote. Made me look younger, didn't allow it to echo the age whispering in my eyes._

_ I smiled down at my mother, bemused. "She didn't, now that you mention it. Why do you ask?"_

_ "Because men have a habit of changing, once a woman's left their life. They're…different. In good ways, and bad ways."_

_ Artfully, I concealed a grin beneath my mustache. "Are you suggesting that wear beards poorly?"_

_ "Oh, no. The beard's only a symptom of the change. The real difference is down here, in your heart." She pressed a hand to her chest for emphasis, then spared me a playful grin. "And I personally think the beard makes you look very dashing, son. Like your father."_

_ Chuckling to myself as she went in search of Owen, I was only faintly aware of the fact that I'd forgotten to ask her about the widow's involvement with said brother. But that could wait, I supposed. Until after sunrise._

_ After sunrise, when we'll be at the river's side._


	4. Chapter 4

_ I didn't want to. Not really. The task at hand, the obligation sprawling me like endless desert—it brings back memories, bitter-sweet and tinged with rueful pleasure. But I did it anyway, shoved my pain deep down and returned to that river…and let the memories flow._

_ The recollection was set sixteen years prior, on the gently rolling hills and pastel countryside of Alderaan. I was young, then—barely twenty-one, in fact—with a shock of copper hair that was still bound in the traditional padawan style. Satine was with me, but Qui-Gon was oddly absent; he'd gone away for days, told us that he was going to check up on something in the city while we remained in the country, the free winds stirring our hair. And unsurprisingly, Satine and I had taken this brief time of solitude to be grow closer, strengthen the bound we both knew was there, smoldering beneath the surface._

_ I'm not certain whose idea it was to venture into the river. It might've been Satine, or it might've been me; the memory's grown too hazy to know for sure. Too frayed around the edges, unfurling as I reach backward to stroke it. But either way, we ended up wading into the river (fully-clothed, mind you) that day, letting its icy eddies and flows drag away our cares. _

_ And I'm not sure how long we stayed in there, either—again, the memory is quickly slipping away. But I do recall dragging ourselves onto dry land under a swift sunset, watching in child-like awe as the horizon appeared to silver, casting gleaming warmth onto all the lied beneath. I think I might've actually wondered—if only for a moment—if that sunset had been for us, woven by the tapestry clouds and paintbrush sun so that it would only touch us. Would only be seen by us, stretched on our backs like languid vine cats as we dried ourselves in the last light of day—but I knew that was impossible. Improbable. Everyone on this side of Alderaan, everyone with eyes to take in the gem sky and glass fields—they had seen it, too. Had watched along with us as the day had seemed to roll back like a scroll, revealing the silvered majesty of twilight encroaching._

_ And I knew it then as much as I do now: I love the water._

_ But I'm still not sure why._

_ This morning, though, it was almost painful to make the journey to the river. Because of that memory of the sunset. Of watching what you thought would always remain be stripped away, piece by piece, till you only see night streaming through._

_ Despite what I'd told my mother, Owen and I didn't reach the river by morning. We didn't. The sunrise…it's best I avoid those, seeing how empty their promise of light really is. How they whisper, I'll stay, stay, stay—when all along they've known they'll have to leave you, leave you behind. In the sad little wake, quickly fading into the black sea._

_ By the time we reached the river, the sun beaming directly overhead: high noon._

_ As I set to work collecting water samples, Owen squinted down at the river's scintillating surface. It was dancing, alive with the light of noon, and seemed to beckon us to drink. To immerse ourselves in it—but we must've seen it for the lie it was, because neither of appeared moved by the dazzling display. We simply frowned down at the glinting water and muddy banks and our muddier boots…and somehow reached the conclusion that they were all one in the same._

_ Owen sighed, his pent-up breath sounding like a gale in the midst of the stilled countryside. "I think a few our neighbors use this river for drinking water. What a shame, if it's turns out it's poisoned."_

_ Glancing up from the task at hand, I sent him a puzzled look. "But it's on your property."_

_ "Yeah, it does. But it's a long river, Obi-Wan; it passes through several properties." A hint of something touched his eyes, daring them to gloss over. "That widow you saw at the river the other day? She gets her water from it, too."_

_ "If the river runs through her property, then why was she here, watching me?"_

_ He shrugged. "Maybe she thought…someone would be here."_

_ "Owen…" Patting my hands dry on my tunic, I stood. Turned. Faced him. "Owen, was she looking for you?"_

_ Surprise registered on his face—our mother's face, all gaunt angles and milky eyes. "I—how did you-?"_

_ Tucking my water sample safely into my tunic, I shrugged. "I'm a Jedi; reading people is sort of in the job description."_

_ "Then you'll know that it's over—_was_ over a long time ago."_

_ "I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't. It's just that in my experience, feelings tend to linger on, sometimes well past when we think they would be expedient. Or appropriate."_

_ Censure shadowed his gaze. "Then what _are_ you saying, exactly?"_

_ "I'm not certain I'm saying anything, Owen." I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, in the direction of the widow's house. "Except that you should go and talk with her—if only to warn her of the possible danger she's in. Who knows? That poison might have a readily available antidote."_

_ Rubbing at his sparse, stubbly beard, Owen shook his head. "No."_

_ My brows shot up. "No? Owen, you said it yourself—she's dying. And this poison?" I gestured broadly toward the river. "It could be what's killing her. You don't wish to be responsible for her death, do you? Don't you have some feelings left for her, some part of you that—"_

_ Again, he shook his head. "Obi-Wan, I want you to go."_

_ "Me?" Me, who's barely known this woman. Who doesn't even know her name, her age. Who hasn't seen enough of her naked soul to see past the plain features and worn body and into true, true eyes, where she has a face I know. "I've only met her twice, Owen. Surely she'd be more liable to listen to you?"_

_ "She would," he admitted, gaze lost in the cloudless noon, "but I'm afraid, Obi-Wan. Afraid of what I'll find." He swallowed, painfully. "I'm afraid I'll be too late."_

_ And that was when all those memories of Satine came flooding back, unbidden. Me, held back by a throng of Death Watch solider, their strong hands clamped hard on armored shoulder. Satine, clawing at her throat, at the invisible vice that was slowly asphyxiating her. Forcing breath from her lungs, shoving away light from her eyes. And then a blade ignited, black to the core…and went through. Through her. _

_ And I and the floor rushed to meet her, both witnesses to her descent into another world._

_ I was too late, too._

_ Finally, I nodded. "I understand, Owen. More than I want to."_

_ Interest clearly piqued, Owen regarded curiously."How so?"_

_ "I…" I bit my lip, chewed it for a moment. "Do you know why I'm here, Owen, instead out on the frontlines?"_

_ "No," he said, simply._

_ "I was given leave by my superiors, because something happened to me. Very recently. And although I believe they don't know all the details, they knew that I was in pain, that I wasn't quite myself. So they gave me some time off, allowed me to use that time wherever and whatever way I chose—and I chose to come here."I looked away, willing myself to hold it together, to keep from unraveling for a moment longer. "I came here to remember."_

_ "Remember what?"_

_ I shook my head. "I'm not sure. Not exactly. But when I do know, when I find it…I'll be sure to let you know."_

_ With that, I started off toward the widow's house…leaving Owen frozen to the mucky bank._


	5. Chapter 5

___**(SATINE)**_

I'm just emerging from dreamless sleep when Obi-Wan slips into the room, kneading his temples. Grim resolution paints his features white—whiter than the Temple's Halls of Healing, than its pure, pristine glow. Whiter than the clarity the Jedi Healers have given my mind after they purged it of all echoes of the Bando-Gora.

Apparently, coming into _any_ contact with a Bando-Goran puts your mind at risk of coming under their influence—which is what happened to me. At least, I think this is the case. Kind of. There are incognito Bando-Gorans on Mandalore, after all, where they mingle and mix with the people like sickness through blood; so it's entirely possible that I crossed paths with one recently, enabling them to assume control over my mind.

I haven't told anyone any of this, but I also suspect that my awakened—if not heightened—attraction toward Obi-Wan was an echo of the late Bando-Goran leader, a woman the Jedi refer to as "Vosa". From what the healers tell me, she was once infatuated with another Jedi—with her Master, in fact—and as result, was expelled from the Order with a qualm. Bitter and still inflamed with vicious, needy love, Vosa conceived a plan to both woo and scourge: by exercising her skill and prowess as a psychic, she drew the attention of her Master…and enforced her own troubled mind on her followers. She imbued them with her lust, her desire, her overweening passion—which is what's been eating away me, I guess. Because in the past, I wasn't attracted to Obi-Wan in the primarily carnal sense.

I loved him for his heart.

And I still love him now, but in a different fashion. I want him to be mine, yes, to grow old with me and watch as both unravel under the fist of time. But now, I recognize that this is impossible, that his heart beats harder for the Order than for any sol being—so I surrender to this. I admit defeat, acknowledge that I will never, ever, receive requited love from Obi-Wan Kenobi.

For now, I'm alright with that.

Speaking of Obi-Wan, he wilts into a nearby chair, gaze fixated on some distant, unseen point. Then he screws his eyes closed. Tightly.

"Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?" I demand, lifting my head from an over-stuffed pillow.

"It has," he admits, kneading once more at his temples. He slumps back into his chair. "I think the assassin's been hiding under noses this entire time."

"It's a Jedi."

"I believe so, yes. And I think I know _which_ Jedi, too—so now it's only a matter of finding this assassin." He drags a hand over his face. "I haven't much time, either, given some recent developments. But I wanted to let you know that you were right. Right about me and Siri—just not in the total sense. I loved her, yes—and I still love her to this day. But I only love my idea of her, really, because I hardly had time to know her as a lover; instead of our year-long love, she and I were only permitted a day or so before circumstance intervened.

"I only want to know her—but seeing how she prefers freezing me out, I don't think that will be happening anytime soon."

Then he just…falls silent. Stands. Give me one long, final look before turning away, heading toward the door.

And into force-knows-what.


	6. Chapter 6

_ So, guess what? I'm doing it. Again._

_ I'm leaving._

_ It's not that my leave has run out or anything, though. It's just that I'm…running dry, here. Here, in this normal, green place—or I'm running out. Out of options, out of beings who notice me, see me behind them as I stamp, shout, scream for them to hear._

_ Like I wrote earlier, this isn't the first time I've had to do this. And I'm not just referring to having to leave my—their—home on Stewjon, either; it's just a constant fact of my life. Change, metamorphoses, seasons—they swing about me, incessant. Stripping me from one place to the next, never allowing my eyes to adjust to the murk._

_ I left the Order, once. Then I stopped, closed my eyes, and turned around. Headed straight home, shoulders drooping, certain that I would never again be held as an equal. But I was, and that return journey—that was sort of leaving, too. Leaving from a dim, dank room and rushing into the world outside, the light bursting through._

_ And I've left beings behind, too. Beings I cared about. Qui-Gon, whose soul or whatever was left wafting over the place where he met his end. Satine, who watched with glass eyes as I trudged onto that ship, bound for Coruscant and places far, far away. _

_ I left behind my family, who blinked so often that they have forgotten that they once had another child. Had me. Me, who is prepared to leap off the precipice one final time and cut all ties. Annul the bond of blood._

_ This time around, however, I'm not going to complicate things with goodbyes._


	7. Epilogue

_Home._

_ Funny, how it's here, on Coruscant. Not there. Not on Stewjon, where the grass rolls toward the pastel sky and the families are painfully normal. So much so that they cannot possibly fathom the spreading expanse of difference that is between us, refusing to see the abyss rather than attempting to cross it, or just plumb it._

_ I realize now that this is why I seem to have problem holding onto things: much too much space separates me from the rest of the universe—just as it does to every other Jedi._

_ But now I'm home, and there's not stone's throw barring me from the scarce feeling that somehow I belong. Not that I am accepted, embraced, am always lavished with shows of gaudy affection—after all, Jedi are still Jedi. Still reserved. Hesitant to open up, to let the entanglements begin to snare them from the inside out—but at least they are somewhat like me. And they don't overlook me, peering through my mortal hide to see faces on the other side. Faces that are familiar to them, aren't strange and arid and icy like that of their son-brother._

_ Before I left, however, someone took notice of me. Again. And it wasn't merely a someone, either: it was Alee, striding jauntily toward me as I had been preparing to leave. To pack up my meager "belonging", shove them aboard the dormant starfighter that would take me far, far away, far from the listless farmland and swift sunrise._

_ "You're leaving," she said, skin and hair and everything else soft with the rising sun's silver kiss. _

_ Hand poised to hoist my lugged into the starfighter's pitifully minute storage compartment, I paused to regard her. She wasn't delirious this around, eyes focusing on some private, thought-spun world. She wasn't forgetting things, wasn't standing at the river with urn and bottled grief clutched to her chest, maddening her—but she wasn't entirely whole, either. Even with the poison gone (that particular brand of toxin could affectively induce temporary memory loss, you know) and the river far behind her, her face looked ashen, more so than her sad, blanched little home._

_ I nodded warily. "I am. I decided it was time to head back home, to get down to business."_

_ Her arms folded over her dimensionless chest. "Owen says you're a Jedi."_

_ All of my inward gates and barriers began to rise. "So he told you, then."_

_ "He did. And you mother—she says that you're not allowed to have families or something, which begs a couple of question. Like, why are you here, visiting your family?" Her eyes scrutinized me, slicing through layer upon layer with a surgeon's precision. "Or why did mention that you'd lost someone you loved, back at my cabin?"_

_ I turned, busying myself with my luggage. "You remember that?"_

_ "The poison's worn off, Kenobi," she pointed out, hackles rising. "So yes. I remember that, and I want you to explain."_

_ Leaning over the prow of my starfighter, I sighed. Massaged my tired eyes, trying to work away the residual glow of a lifetime of sights. Failed, then opted to simply let shoulder hunch, admitting defeat in the face of age and pressing memory. "It's personal, Alee. I'd…I'd rather not go there. Not today."_

_ Chin tilted up, Alee sent me a hard, measured look. "If you don't go there now, you never will. Because time doesn't make things better, Jedi: it only allows memories to flood in. Lets more things fester beneath the surface."_

_ I risked fixing her with a brief look askance. "Is that why you were there at the river that day? Were you trying to…I don't know…face it? Or were you 'remembering'—your word, not mine."_

_ A slow nod. "I was remembering my husband, Kenobi—even if that poison had my head in a different place. That's part of losing someone, after all, the remembering. Recalling that that someone is really gone, and all you have left are ashes and memories."_

_ "Memories aren't always the most pleasant experience in the galaxy, Alee. Hence rum. And deathsticks."_

_ "Of course they _always_ aren't," she agreed. "Hardly anything is steady, accept for truth. And sometimes, the unsteady things come from what's reliable, trustworthy: like fires bringing either warmth or burns." Her unremarkable gaze softened, just a tad. "Good things can bring us pleasant things just as soon as evil. You should've seen that these past few days, what with that blasted river and all."_

_ I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard. Squeezed my eyes shut, shut tight, hoping no light would stream in. Maybe darkness would keep the memory at bay, would keep me from recalling how I set out early this morning, spreading an urn-full of pale ashes into that ever-whispering river. "Believe me, I know that. Perhaps better than you. It's just that it's hard to actually believe it to be true." _

_ "I think," she said softly, carefully, "that you do believe it. You just have a hard time remembering that you do."_

_ My eyes snapped open, pupils shrinking away from sun rising. "You honestly think that."_

_ "Was that a question or a statement?"_

_ "Both, I think. Neither. Really, I have no clue."_

_ "Do you remember her name?"_

_ Twisting at the waist, I sent her a bemused—if not somewhat vexed—frown. "How you did you know it was a woman?"_

_ She shrugged, all leonine nonchalance. "Just a lucky guess, I suppose. And you didn't answer my question: what was her name?"_

_ "You didn't ask that," I pointed out. "You wanted to know if I remembered her name, didn't ask what it was."_

_ "What's the difference?"_

_ "If I'd answered your first question, my response would've been 'yes. But I wish I didn't.' But if you'd asked me that former, I would've told you that her name was Satine, and that she's dead—and blast it, it's my fault. _My_ fault; I did it. Let it happen."_

_ "I never asked you if you any of those other things either, Kenobi."_

_ I hunched over the starfighter, palms pressed flat to the hull. No, she hadn't. But I'd said it nonetheless, had relinquished a single howl of the beast lurking within, and now it hung there, filling the air between us. And it begged—oh, it _begged_—to be noticed. "I do remember. A lot of things." I spread my fingers wide, letting the sunrise play with the metal hull beneath. "I remember that I'll die, one of these days."_

_ "And remember that you are alive today, thanks to the powers-that-be."_

_ After she backed, turned away and trudged back over downy fields, I never saw her again. Ever. To this day, all I have is a memory of her, her drab hair coming alive in the morning-promise-rising light._

_ And all I have left of Satine is my memory, after I freed her ashen cloud and let it drift away with the river._

_ It seemed fitting, somehow. Letting her listlessly travel a current, no apparent meaning in sight—it was a portraiture of her life, you could say. Of all life, now that I've seen war and warless bloodshed and suicides and murder and, oh, a thousand other things. Now that I've watched the will of the force take its strange, indiscernible shapes. Forms that look for all the world like tombstones, funerals, and ceaseless river-tears, but are really pathways intended to drive the world toward some unforeseen future._

_ What isn't seen…it's incredible, I've heard. Breath-taking. Which is why it's better that it's not visible—that it's unseen and yet here, always before us on the path._

_ Qui-Gon compared it to a river, once. I was young—younger than that moment with Satine, even. Really, you could've called me a boy: newly apprenticed, skinny, with a shock of red hair capping my head. Freckles lightly dusting my gaunt cheeks (Maybe I'm more of an echo of my mother than I care to admit) as I took in Qui-Gon's voice, taking comfort in the steadiness of it. The certainty._

_ "Its currents are sure," he'd said, hazel eyes carrying the burden of years-worth of seeing, "but it often doesn't appear that way. In fact, it appears as though it's aimless, as if every direction it chooses has no purpose. But that's only a lie, Obi-Wan: a lie told by our senses, which can never see past what's merely visible. That's the heart of despair, really—believing that seeing equals faith, and that all we see is all there is. No hope, no chance of something being made right. Because believing is seeing, Obi-Wan: seeing that there is something beyond, and that it is guiding history toward some fixed point. That everything—and I do mean everything—happens to for a reason."_

_ But it's in the face of death when we forget it most: the current is carrying us home, toward the swift sunrise._


End file.
